Toolbox

It’s quiet here, in my little potting shed. Right down the end of our garden. Swept by the fire reds of the fusia bush and the overburdened limbs of overhanging apple trees.

It is, my secret garden.

My own, silent little resting place. I like to sit here and listen to the garden.

If I sit here long enough, and loosen my old, thin limbs, I can douse the thousand little campfires of thoughts in my head. And then, I hear the grass breathing.

Audrey is on one of here cleaning splurges before the grandchildren arrive. Two little tightly wound springs unleashed, that will kick up the dry leaves, and colour the air with excited cries as they race each other up and down my now, still lawn. I need these moments to gather my strength, and ensure I have my moment of solitude before they rush in and rejuvenate this little island of mine.

My foot rests on my old tool box. A wooden thing, with soft black marks over it’s old mottled pine skin. It’s own liver spots to mirror my own. We’ve grown old together, we two. The handle was once wrapped with a leather strap, I recall, long since frayed and fallen apart, discarded, back when I didn’t feel the need to cherish it’s memory. I bend down, and pass my fingers across the initials dug deep into it’s lid, and see my Fathers hand in mine. I see his deep brown hands, wisps of grey hairs, nails yellowed and  hard like old cracked piano keys. Those once rough, impenetrable ridges of his own fingers, like some dry foreign landscape are now, my own . His touch is in this box.

Beneath his initials, I can feel the faint outline of the shallower groves of my own two initials, carved there, so many years ago, on a day when he told me that this tool box would be mine, if I kept it safe, and kept it properly. When he bent his softening, smiling face towards mine and said “This is yours, son” His eyes were grey, with sunspots of green. Always smiling.

It’s different to how my hand feels when i hold Audrey’s hand. that little spark of electricity that passes between us isn’t there. It’s a warmth. like holding your hand up to the sun. That warmth that spreads from your finger tips to your palm, and up your arm to tickle your sleeves. Like passing your hand through warm, soothing bathwater. No thrill of excitement, or anticipation. Just that summery feeling. As if the sun has just come out from behind a raincloud. Just for you. As it seemed to do in those back garden years of my youth where nothing, nothing, outside of those garden walls could hurt you.

I ponder the space beneath my own initials. My fingertips lingering. As if waiting. Waiting for a seed to grow beneath them. And I wonder. Will my fathers memory carry forward to my own son with this box? Or will he feel only my touch, and in  it,  the memory of me, in his own little potting shed?